Characteristics of Society Under the Dynasties

Cultural Expression

Koreans, like the other East Asian peoples, have a highly developed
aesthetic sense and over the centuries have created a great number of
paintings, sculptures, and handicrafts of extraordinary beauty. Among
the very earliest are the paintings found on the walls of tombs of the
Koguryo Kingdom (located in what is now North Korea) and around the
China-North Korea border area. These paintings are colorful
representations of birds, animals, and human figures that possess
remarkable vitality and animation. Similar, though less spectacular,
tombs are found around the old capitals of the kingdoms of Paekche and
Silla in present-day South Korea. A number of gold objects, including a
gold crown of great delicacy and sophistication dating from the Three
Kingdoms period, have been found in South Korea.

Buddhism was the dominant artistic influence during the later Three
Kingdoms period and the Silla and Koryo dynasties. Themes and motifs
that had originated in India passed to Korea through Central Asia and
China. A number of bronze images of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas were
made during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. The images are not
mere copies of Indian or north Chinese models, but possess a distinctly
"Korean" spirit that one critic has described as "as
indifference to sophistication and artificiality and a predisposition
toward nature." The striking stone Buddha found in the Sokkuram
Grotto, a cave temple located near Kyongju in North Kyongsang Province,
was carved during the Silla Dynasty and is considered to be the finest
of Korean stone carvings. During the centuries of Buddhism's ascendancy,
a large number of stone pagodas and temples were built, one of the most
famous being the Pulguksa Temple near Kyongju.

The Koryo Dynasty is best remembered for its celadons, or
bluish-green porcelains, considered by many specialists to be the best
in the world, surpassing even the Chinese porcelains upon which they
were originally modeled. Many have intricate designs of birds, flowers,
and other figures rendered in light and dark-colored clay on the
blue-green background; some are delicately formed into the shapes of
flowers, animals, and objects. Choson Dynasty pottery tended to be
simpler and more rustic and had a great influence on the development of
Japanese artistic appreciation from the late sixteenth century on. After
the attempted Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s, Korean potters
were taken back to Japan.

During the Choson Dynasty, Buddhism was no longer a source of
artistic inspiration. The art, music, and literature of the yangban
were deeply influenced by Chinese models, yet exhibited a distinctively
Korean style. Korean scholar-officials cultivated their skills in the
arts of Confucian culture--Chinese poetry, calligraphy, and landscape
painting. Poetry was considered to be the most important of these arts;
men who lacked poetic ability could not pass the civil service
examinations. Scholars were expected to refine their skill in using the
brush both in calligraphy, the ornamental writing of Chinese characters
that was considered an art in itself, and in landscape painting, which
borrowed Chinese themes and styles. However, scholarly calligraphers and
landscape painters were considered amateurs. Professional artists were
members of the chungin class and were of low status, not only
because their painting tended to diverge from the style favored by the
upper class but because it was too realistic. Particularly among the yangban,
Chinese dominance of cultural expression was assured by the fact that
Korean intellectual discourse was largely dependent on Chinese
loanwords. Scholars preferred to write in Chinese rather than in native
Korean script.

One uniquely Korean style of painting that developed during this
period was found in the usually anonymous folk-paintings (minhwa),
which depicted the daily life of the common people and used genuine
Korean rather than idealized or Chinese settings. Other folk paintings
had shamanistic themes and frequently depicted hermits and mountain
deities.

A distinctive position in traditional Korean literature is occupied
by a type of poem known as the sijo--a poetic form that began
to develop in the twelfth century. It is composed of three couplets and
characterized by great simplicity and expressiveness:

This poem is by Chong Mong-ju (1337-92), a Koryo Dynasty loyalist who
was assassinated at the foundation of the Yi Dynasty. The poet refers to
his political choice not to side with the new government.

Many of these poems reveal a sensitivity to the beauties of nature,
delight in life's pleasures, and a tendency toward philosophical
contemplation that together produce a sense of serenity and, sometimes,
loneliness. Frequently the poems reveal a preoccupation with purity,
symbolized by whiteness:

Do not enter, snowy heron, in the valley where the crows are
quarreling. Such angry crows are envious of your whiteness, And I fear
that they will soil the body you have washed in the pure stream.

The development of a Korean alphabet (today known as han'gul),
in the fifteenth century gave rise to a vernacular, or popular,
literature. Although the native alphabet was looked down upon by the yangban
elite, historical works, poetry, travelogues, biographies, and fiction
written in a mixed script of Chinese characters and han'gul
were widely circulated. Some vernacular literature had what could be
interpreted as social protest themes. Probably the earliest of these was
The Tale of Hong Kil-tong by Ho Kyun. The protagonist, Hong
Kil-tong, was the son of a nobleman and his concubine; his ambition to
become a great official was frustrated because of his mother's lowly
background. He became a Robin Hood figure, stole from the rich to give
to the poor, and eventually left Korea in order to establish a small
kingdom in the south. Other vernacular writers included Kim Man-jung,
who wrote The Nine Cloud Dream, which dealt with Buddhist
themes of karma and destiny, and The Story of Lady Sa. Pak
Chi-won's Tale of a Yangban gave a realistic account of social
life in eighteenth-century Korea. In 1980 Korean scholars discovered a
nineteenth-century vernacular novel that told of the complicated
relationships among members of four yangban and commoner clans
over five generations in a very detailed and realistic manner. At 235
volumes, this work is one of the longest novels ever written.

P'ansori combine music and literary expression in
ballad-form stories, which are both recited and sung by a performer
accompanied by a drummer who sets the rhythms--a kind of "one-man
opera" in the words of one observer. P'ansori usually are
inspired by myths or folk tales and have Confucian, Buddhist, or
folkloric themes. In the 1970s and 1980s, dissident students often drew
on the techniques of traditional folk drama to satirize contemporary
politics.

Korean folk tales are closely tied to religious traditions and
usually have shamanistic, Buddhist, or Confucian themes. While Confucian
tales tend to be moralistic and didactic, Buddhist and shamanistic tales
are highly imaginative and colorful, depicting the relationships among
spirits, ghosts, gods, and men in many different and often humorous
ways.

Korean Identity

That the Korean kingdoms were strongly affected by Chinese
civilization and its institutions was not surprising. Not only were the
Chinese far more numerous and often more powerful militarily than the
Koreans, but they also had a more advanced technology and culture.
Chinese supremacy in these realms was acknowledged not only by the
Koreans, who were militarily inferior, but by those who were powerful
enough to conquer China, such as the Kitan Liao, who ruled parts of
northern China, Manchuria, and Mongolia between 907 and 1127; the
Mongols who ruled China from 1279 to 1368; the Jurchen tribes, who later
seized northern Manchuria; and the Manchus, who ruled China between 1644
and 1911. The adoption of Chinese culture was more than simply an
expression of submission to China, it also was the indispensable
condition of being civilized in the East Asian context. This situation
continued until the inroads of Western civilization substantially
altered the political and cultural map of Asia in the latter part of the
nineteenth century.

The adoption of Chinese culture and institutions by the Korean
kingdoms, however, did not obliterate the identity of the Korean people.
Koguryo had risen against the Chinese conquerors, and Silla had
stubbornly resisted Chinese attempts to turn it into a colony. While
Silla and subsequent dynasties were obliged to pay tribute to the
various Chinese, Mongol, and Jurchen dynasties, and although Korea was
subjected to direct overlordship by the Mongols for a century, the
Korean kingdoms were able to survive as independent entities, enabling
their citizens to maintain an identity as a separate people.

Further contributing to the maintenance of this identity was the
Korean language, which linguists generally agree belongs to the Altaic
language family of Inner Asia. There is no doubt that the indigenous
language was deeply affected by the country's long contact with China.
Not only did its written form rely on Chinese characters until the
fifteenth century, but about half of its vocabulary was of Chinese
origin. Nevertheless, the language is very different from Chinese in its
lexicon, phonology, and grammar. Although at one time the ruling classes
were set apart from the rest of the population by their knowledge of
Chinese characters and their ability to use Chinese in its written form,
since the unification of the peninsula by the Silla Dynasty all Koreans
have shared the same spoken language.

Political and Social Institutions

Despite the fact that Korea would undergo numerous reforms, palace
coups, and two dynastic changes after the Silla period, many of the
political and social systems and practices instituted during the Silla
Dynasty persisted until the nineteenth century. Their Chinese
inspiration, of course, had much to do with the durability of these
systems. One lasting principle was that of centralized rule. From the
time of the Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla states of the Three Kingdoms
period, royal houses always governed their domains directly, without
granting autonomous powers to local administrators. The effectiveness of
the central government varied from dynasty to dynasty and from period to
period, but the principle of centralization--involving a system of
provinces, districts, towns, and villages--was never modified.

Another feature that endured for centuries was the existence of a
stratified social system characterized by a clear distinction between
the rulers and the ruled. Under the Silla Dynasty, society was rigidly
organized into a hereditary caste system. The Koryo Dynasty, which
succeeded Silla, instituted a system of social classes according to
which the rest of the population was subordinate to an elite composed of
scholar-officials. By passing the higher civil service examination and
becoming a government official a commoner could become a member of the
elite, but since examinations presupposed both the time and wealth for
education, upward mobility was not the rule. This system continued
during the Choson Dynasty. The strength of the aristocratic tradition
may have been one factor contributing to the relative weakness of the
Korean monarchy, in which the king usually presided over a council of
senior officials as primus inter pares, rather than governing as
absolute ruler.

During the Choson Dynasty, family and lineage groups came to occupy
tremendous importance. Because one's social and political status in
society was largely determined by birth and lineage, it was only natural
that a great deal of emphasis was placed on family. Each family
maintained a genealogical table with meticulous care. Only male
offspring could prolong the family and clan lines and theirs were the
only names registered in the genealogical tables; therefore, the birth
of a son was regarded as an occasion of great joy. The Confucian stress
on the family reinforced the importance Koreans attached to the family.

The Confucian principle of Five Relationships governing social
behavior became the norm of Korean society. Righteousness toward the
sovereign, filial piety, deference to older and superior persons, and
benevolence to the younger and inferior became inviolable rules of
conduct. Transgressors of these rules were regarded as uncultured beings
unfit to be members of society. Whether in the family or society at
large, people in positions of authority or occupying superior status
commanded respect.

Still another enduring feature of traditional society under the
Choson Dynasty was the dominance of the yangban class. The yangban
not only held power but also controlled the national wealth in the form
of land. The court permitted the yangban to collect revenues on
the land as remuneration for their services. Because much commercial
activity was related to tributary missions to China or to government
procurements, the wealth of the merchants often was dependent upon the
discretion of the yangban.

Finally, because under the Choson Dynasty one could enter into the
scholar-official elite by passing examinations based on Confucian
writings and penmanship, the entire society stressed classical
education. The arts of war were accorded a lesser status, even though
the founders of both the Koryo and Choson dynasties were generals and
despite the fact that the country had suffered from numerous foreign
invasions.